Silver Lining (2002)

RAITT-IANT HEAT Bonnie hints at her past brilliance

On Silver Lining, Bonnie Raitt stays the course. Her voice remains good and grainy, her slide guitar raw and steely; the back-porch shuffle ''No Gettin' Over You'' could be an outtake from her earliest Warner Bros. albums (all of which have -- hint, hint -- just been reissued in remastered editions). She's become just like the old blues musicians she worshipped in her youth -- mature but with spunk to spare, as when she bites off several double entendres in ''Gnawin' on It.''

In her hands, David Gray's meditative title song takes on a weathered dignity. But the roadhouse rousers and midlife-meditation ballads feel like repeats of past performances, and stabs at world music resemble watered-down Paul Simon. Raitt can still shake some action, but ''Silver Lining'' makes you wish she'd shake it up a bit more.